


After alive

by Monochrome_girl (Skarita)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Theres the angst train toot toot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 08:38:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12837444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skarita/pseuds/Monochrome_girl
Summary: Following the assassination of Mondatta, Emily comes home to a defeated woman. But it's okay. They've been through enough. They'll get through this too.





	After alive

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on my phone in a plane so there might be grammatical sticking points. Secondary tag should really include "why should i let the boys have all the angst".

Tracer's on the couch when Emily gets home. She's late- not unusual, not for a Saturday night- but it's everywhere on the news. 

Tekkartha Mondatta, leader of the Shambali, dead.

Tracer, vigilante ex-overwatch. Girlfriend. Failure.

Lena's curled herself up into a ball, her face hidden against her knees. She has the news on, but it's quiet. She knows what the newscasters are saying, even though her name isn't anywhere on it. Dead. Too late to intervene.

This isn't the first time Tracer hasn't made it in time. Emily knows that, Tracer has told her- about fighting Doomfist, about Overwatch being disbanded, about Amelie. Lena Oxton was never going to have a secret identity, not with her condition.

Emily dumps her bag on the counter and sweeps over to Tracer, up on the couch, arms around her. She feels her hiccup, a little, pathetic noise muffled by her arms. 

"Lena."

It's all she needs to say. Tracer starts to cry, leans into her and just sort of falls apart. 

"It was m-my-" 

"You tried your best, love."

"I- I didn't- I c-couldn't-"

Emily squeezes a little harder. Her coat and her hair are still damp from the rain, so Lena crying into her chest doesn't matter. She's properly crying- huge, heaving sobs, the kind that become painful at the back of the throat because your body is trying so hard to rid you of the emotional overflow. 

"Shhhhh. Shhhh." 

She hasn't taken her chronal accellerator off. The nose of it digs into Emily's lower ribs. She finds herself also having to try very hard not to cry too. She's not succeeding, so she just lays her cheek against her girlfriend's hair and lets the tears come down silently.

"It was Amelie" says Tracer, almost too quiet to hear. "The police know. T-told 'em everything. Didn't..." 

Emily lets her pull herself up and gets a look at her face. Her eyes are red, and so, so sad that Emily can't help but try and wipe the tears away some with her thumb, catching the dirt from Tracer's goggles on her skin. Tracer isn't looking at her-more absently staring through her, her brain still back there in the moment. 

That's the thing about being able to rewind time, but only so far. Your brain is always a better time traveller than you are. She's reliving the moment, wondering if she could ever just reach far enough.

Emily cups Lena's skinny shoulders in her hands. "Lena. Sweetheart, look at me."

Lena blinks, slowly, hard, lets out a long rattle of a breath. She looks at her. Emily knows somehow what nearly happened, then. The part of her that has been in love with this woman for so long just knows.

"I'd rather have you. I know it's selfish but I'd rather have you."

"I let him die."

Emily shakes her head, firmly. "You did what you had to. You couldn't have known how it would go."

"But if I hadn't-"

"Don't you dare. Don't you dare say it should have been you, Lena."

"But it should have!" Lena yells, and it startles her, because Lena seldom raises her voice at her. 

"If I hadn't let her play me- he could have made a difference! He was their chance, and I just..." tears falling down their faces, crystalline. Tracer looks into her eyes. "I could've been the difference" she finishes, her voice raw and fragile. 

Emily doesn't really have words for this pain. There aren't really words for it. She just knows somehow her heart is breaking. Lena seems to know, because there is suddenly a more immediate regret in her eyes. She pulls Emily to her as best she can and Emily hugs her. Hugs her because one way or another she has to remind her that this is what she still has, and she's not going to lose her too.

"M'sorry."

"Let's have a shower. Get clean."

Tracer just looks helpless at her. Emily lifts her up, gently, half-waltzes her over to the bathroom. Undoes the buckles and clips that hold the accelerator in place. She goes to put it on its stand in the lounge but Tracer takes her hand. 

"Don't leave me alone right now. Please love. I don't have it in me." 

"Sweethert, you know I have to put it on charge. I'll leave the door open. Get your jacket off. Go on."

Tracer's grip falters. She watches as Emily places the chronal accelerator on the stand, traces her fingers for a moment over the new scrapes across the back. She doesn't move as Emily returns, mostly because she looks like she might cry again if she does anything. Emily helps her remove her vambraces, peels her gloves off her fingers-they're soaked with sweat. She pulls orange goggles over spiky brown hair.

There's a transformation. She doesn't look like a vigilante now. Just like Lena. Tired and sad and her girl. 

"Come on, love. I need you to help me a little."

Lena's fingernails are always short and chipped, sometimes bruised from falls or scrapes. Her hands are shaking as she undoes her bomber jacket, peels the top of her suit past her shoulders. Emily takes off her own coat, her blouse, throws her skirt out onto the couch, unclips her bra and chucks it in the direction of the laundry. Lena kicks her orange spandex leggings over to a corner by the toilet, like they disgust her suddenly. There are bruises on her knees, and angry splotches of green around one hip. They have a cupboard packed with deep heat and arnica for this, but Emily still breathes through her teeth at it.

She turns the shower on, waits for it to get warm. She's achy today- a long shift, and they've done this many times, but not often in this heavy kind of silence. She pulls Lena into the tub with her, sits her between her legs and tries to work in some conditioner while she's still mostly upright. 

"I don't know how I could live with myself if you weren't here, Em." Lena says, leaning into Emily's hands as they flush suds out of her hair.

"You'd manage" says Emily, because she needs to believe it, and watches the soap writhe into the drain at their toes. Lena doesn't reply, but she lets Emily comb her fingers through her hair and tentatively leans back against Emily's bare chest when they're done. Emily traces the grooves Tracer's harness has left on her, smoothes them out with water until they're no longer red. There are bruises all the way down her spine. She hisses when Emily touches them.

It's not for just anyone, this hero thing. There's no blood down the drain this time, but there has been before. 

She remembers the first time she saw Lena get shot on television. She'd spent the first hour home sobbing with fear while searching Lena's abdomen for the wounds that never took. Sometimes it doesn't all rewind out, but usually it does. Like it never happened at all. Lena had laughed about it afterward, when Emily had calmed down. She'd learned to worry less over time. Her girl was a superhero after all.

She feels Lena shudder a little, mash the heel of her hand against her eye to stop more tears coming. Emily wraps her arms around her girlfriend, knees and all, and waits until she stills. 

She reaches up to turn the water off eventually. Lena's no longer crying when she does. They get out of the tub in silence and wrap themselves in the fluffiest towels Emily can find in the linen cupboard. She ushers Lena straight into bed. It's autumn now, and the weather is getting colder, but thanks to Emily's job and what is usually goodwill to an earnest vigilante they can at least afford a top floor in the suburbs and some decent central heating. 

"Neighbors are out" says Lena. It's the first thing she's said in the last hour that hasn't been apologetic or tormented, so Emily's starting to see the top of the hill a little.

"I think Helen said they were taking the kids to Spain. Get away from it all for a bit."

Lena nods, wrapped loosely in the duvet. There's a call from Winston waiting on her cellphone. Emily messages him, tells him Lena won't feel much like chatting for a while. He already knows what has happened, of course. Emily sometimes wonders how having a crazy life with a superhero girlfriend landed her with a hyperintelligent gorilla for a foster-brother, but she counts her blessings.

"Tell Winston I'll call in- sometime" Lena murmurs. She stares out the window, past the curtains Emily forgot to close. "Accelerator's dented."

"We can go together. I'll get some time off. We'll call him in the morning. He knows you're okay."

Lena's eyes are still watery. She does her best to look at Emily and smile. Every bit the hero, trying to reassure. 

Emily holds her closer and kisses the top of her head, still damp, smelling of apples.

Lena lets out a gentle sigh. "Love you."

"Love you too. We'll get through this tomorrow."

"And the next day, and the day after" Lena follows, because time, while not always linear, is still reassuring to be a part of.

"We'll be here."

There'll be nightmares tonight, Emily knows. Tracer will wake up yelling, her arms outstretched, her fingers trembling. She'll clutch her chest and look for the light of her accelerator, and Emily will hold her until she stops gasping for breath, becomes Lena again. She'll come home. 

In light of all things, Emily would always rather have her. The rest they can live with as it comes.


End file.
